“My friend was rather surprised when I ordered the entrecote steak with onion mashed potatoes and teriyaki sauce. The steak was large and juicy, covered in sweet teriyaki sauce…” Shir Kidan and friend ended a busy day at Rafaelo and managed to even surprise themselves.

PAt the end of an exhausting work day there’s nothing nicer than going to a good restaurant with a close friend. Therefore, after a particularly action-packed day, a day that I knew would offer much to talk about, I grabbed a friend and headed for the industrial area of Rishon Letzion to a restaurant called Rafaelo, an expensive restaurant that with or without a connection to the recession, lowered the prices of their business specials and extended their availability until 7pm.

Because I hadn’t managed to eat yet that day (it happens…) I immediately ordered the chicken breast wrap – strips of chicken marinated in garlic and mint with mayonnaise, cucumbers, and roasted peppers. These juicy ingredients were all wrapped in a tortilla. Due to my seriously irrational amount of hunger, I managed to polish off the wrap in less than 30 seconds, at which point I moved on to finishing my friend’s crunchy fried cauliflower. She didn’t resist. The dish was large enough for both of us, served on a bed of fresh lettuce and generously breaded. I enjoyed the crispness while my friend loved the sour cream pesto sauce that came alongside the cauliflower. Without even noticing, I think I left her mostly sauce and lettuce.

When we go out to a restaurant together (which happens fairly regularly), my friend knows that more often than not I’m going to order pasta in rose sauce. She was rather surprised when I ordered the entrecote steak with onion mashed potatoes and teriyaki sauce. The steak was large and juicy, covered in sweet teriyaki sauce that also accompanied the mashed potatoes. The dish was presented so beautifully that it looked camera ready. Like the steak, the mashed potatoes also needed an escort to achieve perfection, and the teriyaki succeeded in flattering the mash and taking it to another level. The sauce gave this beautiful and tasty dish that special something – made it more interesting, and unforgettable. A small side salad came with the dish in a separate bowl. I immediately gave it to my friend because a carnivore like me doesn’t eat salad, not in public anyway. My friend vegetarian friend put the salad to good use.

And now back to the pasta in rose sauce. My friend ordered the sweet potato ravioli in rose sauce and donated a nice bit of it to me. A large square of ravioli, containing sweet potato paste, and this time, contrary to what you might be used to, the sweet flavour of the sweet potato was discernable. The ravioli was immersed in an impressive pool of tomato cream sauce.

Throughout the entire meal, we had trouble choosing our dishes and were in desperate need of the waitress’ recommendation. Too many of the menu’s dishes looked interesting, caught one’s attention and were seriously palate stimulating. When we got to dessert, the problem had reached colossal proportions. This time, the waitress could not longer help us. A long list of appealing sounding desserts made the choice even more difficult. We decided that working together was the only way to work this out. Working by process of elimination, in which the main guiding line was the amount of chocolate in the dish. I finally chose the biscuit cake made of layers of dulche de lech cream, vanilla cream, select milk chocolate and of course, biscuits. An original dish in which contains just the right amount of chocolate with the other ingredients balancing out the chocolate. We also ordered the tricolade cake – 3 layers of chocolate mousse – white, Belgian and bittersweet, a must order cake, in my opinion. Together, the cakes brought us right to the edge, the light loveliness of them was a real treat, bringing this sweet meal to a sweet end.